It’s been a strange year, but no stranger than plenty of others. Been doing some serious reckoning in my personal life that needs to be done.

Holy shit, it’s amazing how much we apes fuck up living. And here I’m talking to myself primarily. There’s been plenty I don’t regret doing, but still there are a number of regrets. People like to flippantly say: “Well, learn from them and move on. Don’t make the same mistake twice.” But most of my fuck-ups are originals, though when it comes to some shit I’ve had the sense to learn vicariously through others instead of testing the waters myself. For example, hard drug use — we all know how pitiful crack, heroin, and meth users commonly wind up looking and behaving, so why venture down those avenues when they so obviously lead to dead ends?

But when it comes to gray matters, life gets much trickier to navigate. Innocent people get hurt. “Good” people do wrong at times. Loyalties get tested, and hearts get broken. Such is the human melodrama we call life.

No human is an island though, so we do not ever act completely on our own, seeing as how we are each a product of our genetics combined with social conditioning. When it comes to forming a human’s personality, the first four years of life prove crucial. Then as we grow and learn the customs of our society and butt up against its traditions and people’s expectations, we are molded and motivated respective to our personality traits. We receive inputs from our environment all the time, much of which we aren’t capable of consciously recognizing and critically assessing.

There seem to be two popular camps out there in society: those who believe the individual is all-powerful and therefore ultimately responsible for all that happens to them and for what they become, and those who argue that everything is biologically determined and therefore cannot be corrected through the expression of “free will.” Both are fatalistic and based on cherry-picked theories and information; both leave so much out of the picture.

Humans are a paradox all unto ourselves. We are both and then some. Our agency is limited by the societies we live within and the people we come up against, as well as the psychological influences that have effectively impressed on our minds. We are free agents in a sense, yet bound by the collectives we depend upon for survival in the complex systems we’re caged within. That means one’s freedom cannot help but be limited by social consequences. Yet we live in unprecedented times with technology having come to rule our lives, saturating our culture and delivering information overload of all kinds and sorts to anyone and everyone who can’t (or won’t) find a way to tune out.

We impress upon each other. We each possess the power to have a tremendous impact on others. And look at how we use this ability. This at least in part has to do with how our psychologies are being manipulated. Whether this is being done intentionally or unintentionally in pursuit of profits is of little consequence at the end of the day — what matters is how we are being affected and how difficult it is to avoid or escape negative exposure.

People like to talk about the matrix — where here it is, all around all of us, even those who think they’re somehow outside of it simply because they recognize its existence. People like to get caught up in “conspiracy theories” when it comes to this subject, but we waste time mired in dealing with such concerns. Perhaps a better use of our time is devising ways to subvert and undermine what is causing us so much harm. Unfortunately so many refuse to see it, some aim to defend this status quo, some are too fearful, some prefer to intellectualize ’til dawn, some prefer to entertain themselves to death, and many are so damaged they wouldn’t know where to start. Besides, how does one fight the wind?

Looks like there’s nowhere to run these days and few options for hiding. Escapism has become all the rage. So many of us are licking our wounds and defensively spitting at one another, because one other is who we have ready access to. Figured out how to divide ourselves into neo-tribes so that we can lob around blame, when in reality we’re all culpable accessories to what’s become of us and our society.

But then again, we were born into this long after that ball got started rolling. We came up within this and took in what it provided, most especially its educational framework and its media influences. Nearly everything’s being directed by the money game, even when that results in unnecessary pain and problems, even when it drives us crazy and reduces the sense of purpose to living. The sacred has been shattered and contorted into weapons to be used against us. Psychology manipulated so as to usher in a new religion, this time secular and centered around economic and high-up power concerns.

That’s at least one way to briefly explain what’s going on today. We’re being made to loathe our human nature due to witnessing how disgusting it can be when effectively manipulated and coerced. We find out most of us are sell-outs on some level(s). It’s become glaringly apparent what opportunists we can be and what capacity for cruelty we possess. We’ve discovered ourselves to be slick snakes in the shadows and cowards in broad light, much as we hate to admit it. We’ve learned that much that’s been deemed “good” or “bad” is entirely subjective and far more complex than the black-and-white oversimplifications we lazily seek refuge with. We feel trapped and frustrated.

Optimists like to pipe up with criticism for outlooks like this, but let it be known that I haven’t lost all hope. Just trying to accept what I can and cannot control and figure out where to focus my own attention and energies. Fundamental changes begin inside the individual, but we have a lot working against us, most especially our own selves due to our conditioning.

This is a never-ending inquiry. All I can be certain of right now is that there are people I love deeply and I possess the power to hurt and hinder as well as help. The reason why people outside of my loved ones matter is because we all share this society and impact one another in everything we do. When pain pays forward, it loops around and around and eventually can make its way over to those we care most about protecting. The best protection isn’t laws but rather opting to work toward becoming better people. But here again we meet the paradox presented by game theory where such a strategy only works when all parties involved are cooperative, because otherwise the opportunists gains an advantage over cooperate players. But if we respond with reciprocity in all cases, we risk creating unnecessary harm where mercy was needed, and that again generates more pain to pay forward. And those who are seriously emotionally and psychological damaged (and there are many) are already behind the 8-ball in terms of reckoning with all this shit and responding morally (however that is defined).

It’s a crazy loop. No good deeds go unrewarded, and to fight back non-violently in acts of love for humanity in our hearts is to be treated like a martyr. Not that that’s necessarily so terrible, considering the alternatives. But isn’t it odd that taking the life-affirming stance can wind a person up in a situation where their own lives may be negated? Which appears to be what heroics is all about. It calls for a sacrifice of the self, not for other people necessarily though perhaps them as well, but rather for the sake of upholding principles that higher beings will “devolve” into the abyss without.

I look out on society and see the idiocracy taking shape. We the proles are screwed into the indefinite future. We have no alternatives to retreat to and don’t seem particularly interested in creating any. Too busy grumbling with one another over relatively petty shit. Too busy aiming to obstruct one another and pandering to our own desires.

Makes me think of Joseph Campbell imploring us to “follow our bliss,” which is to say where our spirits lead us through our intuitive sense. He wrote books about heroism and the journeys we’re on in creating meaning in our existence. Because that’s the human need overall, to construct workable narratives we can embark on living life with in a purposeful way. Such is life. That higher ideal pertains to the realm of that we like to call “God,” making this an individual pursuit in terms of carrying out what we believe we’re called on to do. Certainly helps to belong to a social sphere that supports such an objective, but it’s a luxury heroes of today may have to learn to operate without. And that makes navigating in this life all the more tricky.

It’s a conundrum that likes to circle around and around. Guess it depends on one’s vantage point at any given time. And I’m falling asleep trying to type this. Bedtime.

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Quotes

"Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true." -- Demosthenes (350 B.C.E.)

"A man is incapable of comprehending any argument that interferes with his revenue." -- René Descartes (1650)

"Our beliefs are not automatically updated by the best evidence available. They often have an active life of their own and fight tenaciously for their own survival." -- D. Marks and R. Kammann

"Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true." -- Francis Bacon

"If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favour of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted." -- Karl Popper (The Poverty of Historicism)

“We’re not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that, you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes.” ― Joseph Campbell

"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house." -- George Carlin

"He that is not aware of his ignorance will only be misled by his knowledge." -- Richard Whately

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." -- Robert Openheimer

"Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves." -- T. S. Eliot

"Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist." -- Kenneth Boulding, economist

"The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us." -- Eric Hoffer

"Oh God, how did I get into this room with all these weird people?" -- Stewart Brand

"Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -- George Orwell

"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but because conscience tells one it is right." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"A truth's initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed. It wasn't the world being round that agitated people, but that the world wasn't flat. When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic." -- Dresden James

"Examine the records of history, recollect what has happened within the circle of your own experience, consider with attention what has been the conduct of almost all the greatly unfortunate, either in private or public life, whom you may have either read of, or hear of, or remember, and you will find that the misfortunes of by far the greater part of them have arisen from their not knowing when they were well, when it was proper for them to set still and to be contented." -- Adam Smith

"A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user." -- Theodore Roosevelt

"No one can be good for long if goodness is not in demand." -- Bertolt Brecht

"No man was ever so much deceived by another as by himself." -- Lord Greville

"I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so." -- Romain Rolland

"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money and control credit." -- Sir Josiah Stamp, president of the Bank of England (1927)

"Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce." -- James A. Garfield

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair

"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles." -- Patrick Henry

"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value." -- Albert Einstein

"The more efficient a force is, the more silent and the more subtle it is. Love is the subtlest force in the world. The law of love governs the world. Life persists in the face of death. The universe continues in spite of destruction going on. Truth triumphs over untruth. Love conquers hate." -- Mahatma Gandhi

"Whoever tells the truth is chased out of nine villages." -- Turkish proverb

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." -- Anais Nin

"We were created to love and be loved." -- Mother Teresa of Calcutta

"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed." -- Mahatma Gandhi

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use." -- Galileo Galilei

"This is the average man, and he is right in his anxiousness, because it is a matter of the fathers and mothers of all the terrors he is bringing to this world in the form of Communism and H-bombs, and last but not least by his fertility and the inevitable overpopulation." -- Carl Jung (Letters Vol. II, Pages 496-497)

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." -- Patrick Henry

"Freedom is participation in power." -- Cicero, Roman orator

"The world is full enough of hurts and mischance without wars to multiply them." -- J.R.R. Tolkien

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein

"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." -- Thomas Jefferson

"In the beginning of change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for it then costs nothing to be a patriot." -- Mark Twain

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." -- Albert Einstein

"A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable." -- Thomas Jefferson (1817)

"You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches, and then pull it out six inches, and say you're making progress." -- Malcolm X

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -- George Santayana

"Ignorance is not bliss---it's oblivion." -- Phillip Wylie

"Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." -- Frederick Douglass

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism.” -- Franklin D. Roosevelt (1938)

"Superstition, which is widespread among the nations, has taken advantage of human weakness to cast its spell over the mind of almost every man." -- Cicero

"We shall have World Government, whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent." -- James Warburg (1950)

"Patriotism is the conviction that your country is superior to all others because you were born in it." -- George Bernard Shaw

"There are a lot of exiles in this world. Each one has his own reason; we have ours. Long before we left America, the America we knew left us. We travel not to get away from it, but to find it." -- Bill Bonner, expatriate

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions." -- Blaise Pascal

"The gods mercifully gave mankind this little moment of peace between the religious fanaticisms of the past and the fanaticisms of class and race that were speedily to arise and dominate time to come." -- G. M. Trevelyan

"Truth does not do so much good in the world as the appearance of it does evil." -- Duc François de La Rochefoucauld

"So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?" -- Ayn Rand

“It was not accidental; it was a carefully contrived occurrence. The international Bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as rulers of us all.” -- Louis McFadden referring to the Great Depression (1930s)

"What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?" -- Bertolt Brecht

"I sincerely believe … that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." -- Thomas Jefferson (1816)

"The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being." -- Theodore Roosevelt (1910)

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." -- Aldous Huxley

"It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or it is not, believed by a majority of the people." -- Giordano Bruno

"We are at the parting of the ways. We have, not one or two or three, but many, established and formidable monopolies in the United States. We have, not one or two, but many, fields of endeavor into which it is difficult, if not impossible, for the independent man to enter. We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world — no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men." -- Woodrow Wilson (1913)

“The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crises, maintain their neutrality.” -- Dante Alighieri (The Inferno)

"Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

"The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." -- Ayn Rand

"The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him; they crush those beneath them." -- Emily Bronte

"Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy, for democracy is the most expensive and nefarious kind of government ever heard of on earth." -- Mark Twain

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -- Benjamin Franklin

"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury." -- Alexander Tyler

"The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, the love of soft living and the get rich quick theory of life." -- Theodore Roosevelt

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." -- Abraham Lincoln

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." -- James Madison

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell

"When people who are honestly mistaken learn the truth, they will either cease being mistaken, or cease being honest." -- Anonymous

"Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party." -- Winston Churchill

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." -- James Madison (Political Observations, 1795)

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." -- Samuel Adams

“The purpose of the law is not to prevent a future offense, but to punish the one actually committed.” -- Ayn Rand

"Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." -- Hermann Goering, Hitler's designated successor

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C. S. Lewis

"To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of ignorance." -- Amos Bronson Alcott

"People like us, who believe in physics, know that distinctions between past, present and future is only a stubborn, persistent illusion." -- Albert Einstein

"The way that can be told is not the eternal way." -- Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)

“The minute you read something that you can't understand, you can almost be sure that it was drawn up by a lawyer.” -- Will Rogers

"A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself." -- Joseph Pulitzer (1904)

"Madness is rare in individuals -- but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the﻿ power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and to form one that suits them better. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may make their own of such territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority intermingling with or near them who oppose their movement.” –- Abraham Lincoln (1848)

"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home." -- James Madison

"We need a Jeffersonian revolution. If it doesn't happen, our democracy will continue to weaken and things will get worse. Right now, we have a two-party electoral dictatorship with each party looking for the highest corporate bidder." -- Ralph Nader

“We are not blind! We are men and women with eyes and brains… and we don’t have to be driven hither and thither by the blind workings of The Market, or of History, or of Progress, or of any other abstraction.” -- Fritz Schumacher

"Being confirmed by others frees me from being responsible for the absurdity of my belief." -- Theodor Geiger

"The defeats and victories of the fellows at the top aren't always defeats and victories for the fellows at the bottom.” -- Bertolt Brecht

"The task of weaning various people and groups from the national nipple will not be easy. The sound of whines, bawls, screams and invective will fill the air as the agony of withdrawal pangs finds voice." -- Linda Bowles

"We can now do what we want, and the only question is what do we want? At the end of our progress we stand where Adam and Eve once stood: all we are faced with now is the moral question." -- Max Frisch

"The truth is not only stranger than you imagine, it is stranger than you can imagine." -- J.B.S. Haldane

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is---infinite." -- William Blake

"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted." -- Bertrand Russell

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

"[...] let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us." -- part of Hebrews 12:1 (NLT)